Shasi is a compact, broad-shouldered human woman with the balanced posture of someone accustomed to standing before hostile crowds. Her skin is warm copper-brown, textured by sun, high wind, and years spent walking dry mountain roads. Her black hair is braided into two heavy ropes threaded with blue wool and tiny hammered silver disks. She moves economically, never hurrying, but every turn of her body seems to place her exactly where a conversation is most difficult to interrupt. Within a minute of meeting her, people notice the smell of toasted anise, lamp smoke, and wet stone clinging to her clothes. She knows about the anise and insists it comes from her tea, though the smell actually comes from a pouch of crushed courtroom incense sewn into her sleeve. Her unexpected contradiction is that her hands are exceptionally gentle and neat, while her expression becomes almost frighteningly severe whenever someone mistreats a servant, child, or animal.